A few months ago an advisory committee for the California State Bar promulgated an interim ethics opinion addressing when lawyers’ blogs should be subject to applicable bar rules governing lawyer advertising.

The impetus behind having bar rules addressing lawyer advertising is generally a reasonable one. The nature of the lawyer-client relationship, the relative imbalance in their respective expertise, and the stress inherent with the sort of situation that would require a lawyer’s assistance makes it important to ensure that lawyers are not misleading or overly aggressive in their solicitation of business. The applicable bar rule regarding lawyer advertising in California is also not especially onerous (although the same may not necessarily be said about similar rules in other jurisdictions).

But a blog is speech, and applying regulation to speech is something that constitutionally can only be done in very limited ways and in very limited circumstances. Yet there is nothing limited about this recommendation. It promulgates a standard that would ultimately catch many, if not most, legal blogs in the California bar’s regulatory net, despite it being unnecessary and chilling to speech that should be beyond government’s reach.

I was asked by someone to comment on an opinion article lambasting the recent FCC action to regulate Internet broadband under Title II. Some of the rhetoric surrounding Net Neutrality is so polarized, he observed, that he couldn’t tell fact from hyperbole and was hoping I could demystify what is going on. As I started writing down my thoughts, they began to take the shape of a blog post, which follows here.

The infrastructure allowing people to connect to the Internet is, by and large, in the hands of a few private commercial entities who have figured out that it might be profitable for them to prioritize certain network traffic over other traffic if those originating this content pay them for this prioritization. The worry here is that content prioritization inherently also amounts to content discrimination. If this practice is allowed to continue, such that the only content Internet users can effectively access is that which is produced by moneyed players able to pay for its prioritization, all the grassroots voices or start-up businesses that also depend on the Internet to have their content disseminated, but cannot afford to pay for the broadband carriers for it, will effectively be drowned out.

Of course, not everyone believes that this sort of scenario is something to get worked up over, and this view shows up in the net neutrality debates. But increasingly the attitude of “Net Neutrality? Who cares?” seems to be largely marginalized. Public opinion (especially ever since the John Oliver soliloquy) seems to be of the view that for the Internet to remain the valuable resource it is, entities providing access to it should allow for the transmission all content equally. President Obama has also come out publicly in support of this view, and at least the three FCC commissioners who ended up voting for the Title II classification appear to share it as well.

Essentially the debate has now moved from “should we have Net Neutrality?” to “how do we achieve Net Neutrality?” The problem now is, though, that while we may want a free and open Internet, it’s not entirely clear how we get it.Continue reading »